Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 22
  2. At Home in Jhana
     … He was talking about peace of mind. You might think there are forms of happiness you get from very aroused states of mind, very active and running-around states of mind, but that’s not really happiness. The mind’s true happiness is when it’s at peace. Yet it’s so rarely at peace. It’s traveling around all the time, jumping from … 
  3. Tranquility & Insight in Tandem
     … That’s why we develop the path and particularly why we try to develop mindfulness and concentration. The two go together. Mindfulness is keeping something in mind. Concentration is getting the mind to stay with one thing. You can’t stay with one thing unless you can keep reminding yourself to stay there, because moments of attention in the mind are normally very fleeting … 
  4. Circumspection
     … We create these little worlds in the mind. But in order to create them, there has to be an element of blanking out, where one part of the mind lies to another part of the mind, closing things off for a second. It’s like when you go to a play, a traditional play, where between the scenes they lower the curtain. The curtain … 
  5. Where You Set Your Heart
    One of the ironies of modern Buddhism is how mindfulness is understood. It’s defined in the popular imagination as an openness to all things, allowing the mind to go where it wants, being non-judgmental, non-reactive, simply keeping track of what’s going on wherever the mind wants to go. This is very different from the Buddha’s teaching on mindfulness. He … 
  6. The Dhamma Eye
     … You look back and you say, “Everything up to this point has been subject to origination—i.e., it’s been shaped by the mind—but this is not shaped by the mind.” Things that are shaped by the mind will pass away, but this is not going to pass away, because it’s outside of time. If something were in time, it could … 
  7. A Gift of Strength
     … What does that mean? It means you have to look after the source of your actions, which is the mind, the intentions in the mind. In fact, the Buddha actually said at one point that your intention is the action. And it stands to reason that if intentions come out of a strong mind—well-balanced, wise, compassionate, mindful—then those intentions will be … 
  8. Mindfulness in the Driver’s Seat
     … One of them is that the chariot has a driver—a charioteer—and the charioteer is mindfulness. Mindfulness is what directs everything else. It’s a very dynamic picture. The mindfulness has to keep in mind where you’re supposed to be going and watch where you’re actually going. Seeing where you’re actually going, of course, is the function of alertness. The … 
  9. Practice Without Gaps
     … As the concentration gets more continuous, it really does have an impact on the mind. It strengthens the mind. Concentration is, basically, mindfulness practice that has become continuous. You remember. With mindfulness practice you set up one frame of reference—in this case, it would be the body in and of itself. The way you breathe right now is one example. Then you try … 
  10. Putting Out the Fires
     … We don’t like to think of our minds as defiled, but once the mind gets still and luminous, you begin to see greed, anger, and delusion are just that: clouds that come and obscure your mind. They make things murky inside so that you can’t see anything clearly. How does that process happen? How do we let those things take over? When … 
  11. Compassionate Duties
    One of the ironies of modern Buddhism is that the Buddha is represented as teaching us that we should have a non-reactive state of mind, a non-judging state of mind as our approach to life in general. Whereas when you look at his teachings, you can see that there are a lot of judgments from the very beginning. As he said, there … 
  12. Training Your Minds
    Training Your Minds April 10, 2011 Close your eyes and focus on the breath. Take a few deep, long in-and-out breaths and see how the process of breathing feels. Notice where you feel it. What kind of sensations do you have in the body when you breathe in? What kind do you have when you breathe out? Where do you feel the … 
  13. Let Pleasure & Pain Fall Off the Plow
    Let Pleasure & Pain Fall Off the Plow June 1, 2018 Ordinarily, the mind goes bouncing back and forth between pain and sensual pleasure. Even though we may realize that sensual pleasures have their drawbacks, we keep going back, going back anyhow because we don’t see any other alternative to pain. When the Buddha taught what he called the middle way, it was to … 
  14. Quiet in Every Way
     … The mind really does get quieter. And only when the mind gets quiet can you begin to notice things. Once when I was in Rayong a group of people from Bangkok came up the hill to where I was staying in the old ordination hall. They plopped themselves down in the hall and exclaimed how peaceful, how quiet it was there in the monastery … 
  15. Self-reliance
     … Why is it that the mind is creating suffering for itself? You get the mind quiet, you get it still, so that you can watch the mind. Fortunately, the mind is something you can watch. This is where the fact of the committee of the mind comes in really helpful. One part of the mind can watch another part of the mind. In fact … 
  16. The Five Strengths
     … This requires mindfulness: the third quality that strengthens the mind. In other words, you keep the breath in mind. That’s paired with alertness, watching what you’re actually doing. If you find yourself forgetting the breath, just remind yourself to come back to the breath. Each time you come back, it strengthens your mindfulness. You want to be alert to what’s working … 
  17. Resisting the Germs of Defilement
     … And you cultivate the desire to develop them more in the mind, realizing that this really is a worthwhile process. Too many people think, “Oh well, whatever goes through the mind just goes through the mind. It comes in, goes out, and that’s it. Nobody else knows what’s going on in my mind, so it doesn’t matter.” But it does matter … 
  18. A Magic Set of Tools
     … As Ajaan Lee says, when you’re mindful and alert like this, mindfulness and alertness change into the factors of jhana, or steady absorption. We often hear that mindfulness practice and concentration practice are two different things, but the Buddha never taught them that way. He said that right mindfulness leads naturally to right concentration. In all of the descriptions of the path — such … 
  19. Always Looking Inside
     … always looking inside, looking at the movements of the mind—the comments, the fabrications of the mind—because they cause trouble, they cause suffering. But as part of the path, we have to use fabrications. After all, the noble eightfold path is a path that’s fabricated. It’s put together out of our intentions. Right views, right resolves, right mindfulness, and right concentration … 
  20. Heedful of Death
     … When the mind is still and clear and balanced like this, it can ask itself questions, pose questions, and get a more balanced answer. Now, there’s no 100% guarantee that every answer appearing in a quiet mind is going to be reliable. But it’s more likely to be reliable than if the mind is just running around. When the mind is really … 
  21. The Right Place to Look
     … Your mind as you sense it from within: This is also your territory. So find some topic here in the body and the mind in the present moment where you can settle in and have a sense of well-being. We work with the breath because it’s the closest thing in our experience to the mind without being the mind itself. It’s … 
  22. Load next page...